The Obama administration is withholding from congressional leaders documents and information related to a $1.7 billion U.S. taxpayer funded payout to Iran earlier this year, furthering accusations the cash was part of a “ransom payment” to free U.S. hostages from Iranian custody, according to communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and conversations with lawmakers.

The controversy over this payment – which arose from the settlement of a longstanding legal dispute with Iran – has deepened in recent weeks after Iranian officials disclosed that nearly all of the U.S. money had been spent to strengthen Iran’s military.

Congressional efforts to compel the Obama administration to come clean about the payment have yet to yield results, prompting a separate effort to determine whether the White House overpaid Iran and is now withholding information that would prove this claim, according to documents obtained by the Free Beacon.

Lawmakers suspect that key records relating to the $1.7 billion payout were not properly maintained over the years and are now seeking to force the Obama administration to hand over the evidence.

The timing of the March legal settlement has raised questions on Capitol Hill among lawmakers who view it as part of the Obama administration’s effort to free 10 U.S. sailors who had been abducted by Iran. It also is suspected that the payout was another byproduct of last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran.

“Earlier this year, the administration announced a $1.7 billion settlement to a case that had been pending for 35 years before the [International Claims] Tribunal, claiming it was in the American public’s best interest to settle,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), one of the lawmakers spearheading the disclosure effort, told the Free Beacon…

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Attorney General Loretta Lynch will announce Friday that she will accept the FBI recommendations on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. This comes after she met with Bill Clinton earlier this week for a half-hour meeting in Arizona.

Her boss President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton and will campaign with her next week.

The New York Times reported:

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch plans to announce on Friday that she will accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a Justice Department official said. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case…

The German Chancellor’s approval ratings have plummeted in the countries hit hardest by Brussels’ chaotic economic policies and the spiralling migrant crisis.

She is now viewed with “no confidence” by huge swathes of the European population at a time when the EU is facing potential oblivion in the aftermath of the Brexit vote.

The results show a growing backlash against Germany from the rest of a bloc that feels Mrs Merkel has trashed their economies and unleashed huge levels of migration for her own country’s gain.

And the survey was carried out before Britain voted to leave the EU, with it likely that her approval ratings have sunk even lower still since the historic June 23 referendum.

Many southern European nations have suffered terrible hardship and depression following the imposition of the euro, which has fuelled an economic boom in Germany by driving down the cost of its exports.

Meanwhile many Balkan and eastern European countries blame Mrs Merkel for unleashing chaotic mass migration on their borders following her infamous welcome for the whole of the Middle East to settle in Germany.

The new poll, by the respected US Pew Research Center, shows that the German leader’s approval ratings are unsurprisingly lowest in Greece, which has been forced into abject austerity and poverty by Berlin…

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Late Wednesday, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who teamed up to win the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, had their arms around each other, celebrating their victory at a Conservative Party fundraiser at the Hurlingham Club, a members-only hangout in West London.

Mr. Johnson, London’s former mayor, was hours away from formally entering the race to become the country’s next prime minister, with Mr. Gove, the current justice secretary, as his co-chair.

But the next morning – in a tumultuous turnabout – it was Mr. Gove who threw his hat in the ring, blindsiding Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Gove, who had long insisted he didn’t want, and wasn’t equipped for, the job, said he felt he had no choice. He said he had lost confidence in Mr. Johnson’s ability to form a team to lead the U.K. through its separation from the EU…

Justice: IRS official Lois Lerner didn’t merely target conservative groups to take away their tax-free status, as first suspected, but also handed over more than a million pages of tax returns to the Justice Department. That’s a crime.

It’s now apparent, if it wasn’t before, that the Internal Revenue Service – which was created solely to collect revenues due the government, not to persecute the administration’s political enemies – has become a kind of rogue agency.

Its chief, John Koskinen, is being threatened with impeachment for not telling the truth in testimony before Congress. But Lerner, more than even Koskinen, has become a symbol of IRS arrogance and illegality.

As Eliana Johnson of the National Review reported this week, Lerner transmitted some 1.25 million pages of tax returns of mostly Tea Party and conservative groups to the Justice Department in October 2010. In Johnson’s words, this was “likely the largest unauthorized disclosure of tax-return information in history.”

For some perspective, this took place at the start of a three-year period during which the same groups found their applications for tax-free status inexplicably held up, while those for liberal groups were more or less routinely rubber-stamped.

But the actual transmission of their tax returns as part of a fishing expedition by Lerner is the big problem here – because she also transmitted IRS Schedule B data, which includes the names and addresses of contributors to those conservative groups. That’s a big no-no…

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While Attorney General Loretta Lynch holds firm to her claim that the motive of Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen may never be known, the FBI is instructing Florida agencies that responded to the attack that night to deny requests for public records pertaining to the case.

Mateen called police several times during the three hour ordeal to declare his allegiance to ISIS, yet only a fraction of his discussions with authorities that night have been released to the public – first an edited version, than an unedited one.

In response to a lawsuit by local media seeking the release of the 911 audio, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office released a letter they got from the FBI instructing them to deny all requests for information and refer news outlets seeking information to the feds, the Orlando Sentinel reports…

On the evening of 13 November 2015, ISIS linked terrorists slaughtered 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks in Paris.

The Islamists murdered 89 concertgoers at the Bataclan during a concert by the Eagles of Death Metal.

ISIS later released a poster of the Paris killers.

One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks was from Phoenix where Obama allowed criminals and cartel members to buy thousands of guns in his Fast and Furious gun-walking program.

Judicial Watch reported:

One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks came from Phoenix, Arizona where the Obama administration allowed criminals to buy thousands of weapons illegally in a deadly and futile “gun-walking” operation known as “Fast and Furious.”.

A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in possession of an unregistered fully automatic weapon, according to law enforcement officials with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.

The investigative follow up of the Paris weapon consisted of tracking a paper trail using a 4473 form, which documents a gun’s ownership history by, among other things, using serial numbers. The Phoenix gun owner that the weapon was traced back to was found to have at least two federal firearms violations – for selling one weapon illegally and possessing an unregistered automatic – but no enforcement or prosecutorial action was taken against the individual…

McConnell lauded Clinton as “intelligent and capable” while casting Trump as not yet credible. He told Time Warner Cable (TWC) News that Trump is “getting closer,” but that he “clearly needs to change.”

Trump meanwhile remained focused on calling out Clinton over failures from her time as Secretary of State, tweeting Wednesday:

ISIS exploded on Hillary Clinton’s watch – she’s done nothing about it and never will. Not capable!..

Kansas, Alabama and Georgia can demand their residents submit proof of citizenship before signing up to vote even if they’re using the federal government’s registration forms, a judge said Wednesday, delivering a win to states concerned about voter fraud.

The League of Women Voters and the Obama administration had tried to halt the practice, arguing that federal law doesn’t require an extensive citizenship check when people register to vote, and saying the three states were imposing an extra burden on voters.

But Judge Richard J. Leon said that while it may be an inconvenience to require proof of citizenship, and voter registration drives may have to do more work to get folks signed up, it’s not an insurmountable burden – and certainly less so than trying to explain Obamacare.

“The organizational plaintiffs and their members will undoubtedly have to expend some additional time and effort to help individuals,” Judge Leon wrote. “But let’s be candid: doing so pales in comparison to explaining to the average citizen how the [Affordable Care Act] or tax code works!”

Since the voter groups didn’t show a real and irreparable harm, he rejected their request for a preliminary injunction.

The ruling is the latest in a years-long struggle by some states to combat potential voter fraud by insisting voters prove they are citizens. In one Kansas count alone, officials count 25 instances of non-citizens attempting to register to vote.

“This is a very real problem and the only way to solve the problem is to require proof of citizenship on the front end,” said Kris W. Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state…

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A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the State Department to produce the e-mail records of Hillary Clinton’s scheduler during her tenure as secretary of state, expanding an investigation being pursued by conservative nonprofit Citizens United into the overlap between Clinton’s official travel and her meetings with foreign Clinton Foundation donors.

Citizens United is slated to receive all e-mails sent to and from Lona Valmoro, Clinton’s State Department scheduler, in the two-week periods before each of 14 international trips Clinton took during her four years in office. David Bossie, president of Citizens United, hopes to confirm suspicions that Clinton maintained an off-the-books schedule, meeting with Clinton Foundation donors on the taxpayer’s dime. “Citizens United wants to know how many overseas dinners Secretary Clinton attended with Clinton Foundation donors that didn’t make it on her schedule,” he says.

Judge Rosemary Collyer, the federal judge presiding over a public-records case brought by Citizens United, was initially hesitant to allow the release of Valmoro’s e-mails, and asked the group to provide one example of an off-the-books meeting with Clinton Foundation donors…

YouTuber Calum McSwiggan claimed to have been “beaten up” after he left a gay club in West Hollywood, but according to reports, officials have since rubbished his story.

Posting to his Instagram account, the 26-year-old vlogger – who runs a LGBT and lifestyle channel – shared a picture of his injuries as he recovered in a hospital bed after an alleged attack at a nightclub on Sunday night.

“After one of the most wonderful weekends at VidCon we went out to a gay club to celebrate, and towards the end of the evening I was separated from my friends and beaten up by three guys,” explained the caption.

But in a statement to The Advocate , Captain Holly Perez, from the West Hollywood Station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, explained that officers had been “unable to substantiate the assault” and that the pictured injuries were self-inflicted inside his police cell.

The police statement explained that authorities found him with “no visible injuries” after the alleged attack and were forced to arrest him after they “observed him vandalising a car”.

It went on to describe how the YouTuber was booked and placed in a cell where he was “then observed injuring himself with the handle and receiver to a payphone inside the cell.”

It comes after Calum took to Instagram on Monday to reveal his injuries, which he used as purported evidence of the alleged attack…

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Finally making good on long-harbored anger at conservative media, Democrats on the Federal Election Commission voted in secret to punish Fox News’ sponsorship of a Republican presidential debate, using an obscure law to charge the network with helping those on stage.

It is the first time in history that members of the FEC voted to punish a media outlet’s debate sponsorship, and it follows several years of Democratic threats against conservative media and websites like the Drudge Report.

The punishment, however, was blocked by all three Republicans on the commission, resulting in a 3-3 tie vote and no action. The vote was posted Thursday and is here.

A Republican FEC commissioner leading that fight, Lee E. Goodman, revealed the vote to Secrets Wednesday and said the official report of the May 26 executive vote will be released Thursday. It is here…

The Obama Administration “grossly misrepresented” the number of crimes the criminal aliens it released from custody in FY 2014 subsequently committed by nearly tenfold, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) charges.

The number of subsequent convictions contained in FIOA documents is far higher than the 1,423 additional offenses ICE reported to the House Judiciary Committee last July.

The criminal aliens released in FY 2014 who went on to commit those additional crimes had convictions for offenses like homicide, kidnapping, assault, sexual assault, and drunk driving. The new crimes, according to ICE’s report to Congress, included vehicular homicide, domestic violence, sexual assault, DUI, burglary and assault.

“Rather than end dangerous politically-driven policies that have put a total of 85,000 deportable criminal aliens back onto the streets in the last three years, ICE tried to hide them by providing grossly inaccurate information to Congress and the American people,” Dan Stein, the president of FAIR, said in statement.

In April, ICE revealed that it released an additional 19,723 criminal aliens -who had a total of 64,197 convictions among them including 101 homicide convictions, 216 kidnapping convictions, 320 sexual assault convictions, 1,728 assault convictions, and 12,307 driving under the influence of alcohol convictions – from custody in FY 2015…

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Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania was found guilty on 23 charges in a corruption case over an illegal $1 million campaign loan Tuesday.

The House member, who was elected to represent a district covering large portions of Philadelphia in 1995, was convicted of money laundering, fraud and racketeering, the Associated Press reports. The former member of the House Appropriations Committee was routing federal grants and nonprofit funding to pay his debt.

He lost his primary race to retain his seat earlier this year to state Rep. Dwight Evans.

According to the AP, Fattah racked up a large amount of debt during his failed mayoral campaign in 2007…

A Florida man is recovering in the hospital after breaking into a woman’s home, soiling himself, and getting shot by the homeowner.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office was called to a Ocala, Florida home on Sunday after a break in was reported, according to the Ocala Post. Police said they found Victor Alex Etherington naked, covered in his own feces, and bleeding from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

The intruder allegedly began knocking on the home’s kitchen windows demanding to be let in. When the 54-year-old woman inside refused to let him in, police say he kicked in the front door. At that point the victim ran upstairs to her bedroom, called 911, and grabbed her .22 caliber handgun.

“The suspect then followed her upstairs to the bedroom at which time she locked herself in the bedroom closet. The suspect forced entry into the bedroom, took off his shorts, (which he had defecated in) and forced entry into the closet where the victim was hiding,” a police deputy told News13.

“The intruder ended up with no clothes on in her bedroom,” Lauren Lettelier of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office told WFTV.

The woman then shot the intruder once in the abdomen.

Police arrived shortly afterward and found the intruder cowering behind the bedroom door and the woman unharmed. The intruder was transported to Ocala Regional Medical Center, underwent surgery, and is now is stable condition…

Moments ago the newswires lit up with news that the Clinton Foundation was among the organizations breached by suspected Russian hackers in a dragnet of the U.S. political apparatus ahead of the Nov. election, Bloomberg reports.

As Bloomberg adds, the attacks on the foundation’s network, as well as those of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, compound concerns about her digital security even as the FBI continues to investigate her use of a personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

A spokesman for the foundation, Brian Cookstra, said he wasn’t aware of any breach. The compromise of the foundation’s computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said. Agents monitor servers used by hackers to communicate with their targets, giving them a back channel view of attacks, often even before the victims detect them.

That’s the official version, and one which accurately focuses on the porous security at both the DNC and Clinton Foundation servers.

What really happened is that earlier today, the infamous hacker Guccifer2 – who as we reported previously, revealed himself as the individual who penetrated the DNC server (which was also blamed on Russian hackers) and revealed to the world the DNC’s “attack files” on Donald Trump, among others, including the Clinton mega donors – released another data dump which he titled as the “Dossier on Hillary Clinton from DNC.”

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The conservative radio personality, Chris Plante (WMAL, Washington, DC) opines that the most insidious power of the media is their power to ignore. While it is certainly true that the chief editor of a major newspaper or the producer of a network newscast has the ability to spike or kill a story, which is essentially their way of “ignoring” the news if you will, what is more subtle, deceitful – and dare I suggest corrupt – is their penchant to frame a story to fit a specific narrative. They no longer report the news, but they do shape a message.

There is not a finer example of the media ignoring the facts and shaping a message than what we are witnessing regarding Hillary Clinton’s email server, the classified material on that server, as well as the case of the missing emails. The media have embraced the Clinton campaign’s narrative that there is “nothing to see here,” that there wasn’t some “mishandling email controversy,” at most, or repeat Secretary Clinton’s own bogus statement, “using a personal e-mail was permissible” as “other Secretaries of State did the same thing.” Other excuses have been thrown against the wall to see if something will stick, such as, she was “trying to protect her privacy” or “she was clueless about how regular emails work on a conventional computer.”…

The FBI and the Department of Justice released an unredacted transcript of the Orlando shooter’s phone conversations with police on the night of the massacre after facing backlash for leaving out the gunman’s references to ISIS in an earlier version of the transcript.

“We have re-issued the complete transcript to include these references in order to provide the highest level of transparency possible under the circumstances,” the DOJ said in a statement released on Monday afternoon.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday that the transcript would be “partial” and omit the group’s name.

“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda,” Lynch said. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to ISIS].”

But critics were quick to accuse the FBI of trying to downplay Mateen’s sympathies for the extremist group by omitting its name from the transcript.

“Selectively editing this transcript is preposterous,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement on Monday. “We know the shooter was a radical Islamist extremist inspired by ISIS. We also know he intentionally targeted the LGBT community. The administration should release the full, unredacted transcript so the public is clear-eyed about who did this, and why.”

The gunman, who has since been identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, spoke to a 911 dispatcher and crisis negotiators as he carried out his attack on the Orlando nightclub Pulse on June 12, which left 49 people dead and more than 50 others wounded…

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Another holiday brought another slaughter of innocents in heavily gun-controlled Chicago. Fifty-six people were shot during Father’s Day weekend, and 13 of those shooting victims died.

According to the Chicago Tribune, “The city recorded its 300th homicide this weekend and went on to record six others over a 60-hour period that saw 56 people shot, 13 fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Monday morning.” From Friday into Saturday alone, five people were killed and another nine were wounded.

This brings the number shot in Chicago to “about 1,800 people” year-t0-date, the Tribune reports.

Breitbart News previously reported that May 2016 was the deadliest May that Chicago has witnessed since 1995. The Tribune reported “nearly 400” people shot and 66 killed in May alone…

A British Special Air Service (SAS) sniper took out two Islamic State bombers with a single shot, saving hundreds of lives in the process.

The SAS sniper took his shot from just over half a mile away, killing the terrorist driver in a split second.

But the story doesn’t end there. The bullet passed through the driver’s head and also hit his accomplice in the neck – an incredible feat, given these two targets were moving. The shot was one of the best in SAS history, according to an SAS source who spoke with the Daily Star Sunday.

“If the sniper had missed a lot of people would have lost their lives,” the SAS source said.

The ISIS driver and his passenger were on their way last month to a detonation site in Libya, where they planned to set off a car bomb and kill hundreds at a Tripoli marketplace. A local Libyan intelligence agent passed over information regarding the coming plot to the British, who promptly got their assets in play to put a stop to the massacre.

The SAS sniper took out his 338 Lapua Magnum rifle and fired two shots off-target to help give him an idea of the wind and speed of the car. Then, aiming carefully, he fired a single round, which hit the driver in the head and caused the car to veer off the road and crash. Libyan soldiers stepped in and fired a hail of machine gun fire on the car, detonating the bomb in the vehicle and causing a massive explosion.

Unfortunately, there are up to 20 British fighters in Libya who have declared loyalty to ISIS…

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In February, a federal judge took the highly unusual step of ruling that State Department officials and aides to Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about her use of a private email server, a controversy that has dogged the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for more than a year.

In comments from the bench, a visibly frustrated Judge Emmet Sullivan complained about the fragmentary way that new revelations about Clinton’s email use have come to light – largely through press reports and leaks and her shifting explanations for why she set up the server in her New York home rather than use an official “.gov” account when she was secretary of state.

“This is a constant drip… That’s what we’re having here, you know, and it needs to stop,” Sullivan said. He ruled that Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that had brought a lawsuit seeking answers about Clinton’s email server, could question six officials and top Clinton aides about why the email system was set up in the first place and how it was used. Transcripts of those interviews must be made public…

Cheri Honkala, head of Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, is organizing the world’s largest ‘fart-in’ to be held on July 28 at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center during Hillary Clinton’s anticipated Democratic nomination acceptance speech.

“We will be holding a massive bean supper for Bernie Sanders delegates on American Street in my Kensington neighborhood on the afternoon of July 28,” Honkala says, TruthDig reports.

“We are setting up a Clintonville there, modeled on the Hoovervilles of the 1930s where the poor and unemployed built shanty towns. The Sanders delegates, their bellies full of beans, will be able to return to the Wells Fargo Center and greet the rhetorical flatulence of Hillary Clinton with the real thing.”

Activists have invited Bernie Sanders to join their bean supper, which Honkala has dubbed “Beans for Hillary.”

“Any remaining beans will be served to the homeless, although we will, of course, be urging Sanders delegates to eat as much as possible,” she says.

Leftist author Chris Hedges will be offering a “nondemoniational” prayer at the dinner.

“I am happy to bless a meal that will be put to such effective political use,” Hedges says, according to TruthDig…

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In the wake of the Orlando shooting, countless media outlets have tried to explain what an AR-15 rifle does and how it works.

Independent Journal Review reporter Joe Perticone recently debunked certain misconceptions about the gun, including the myth that it’s an assault rifle and can fire 700 rounds in a minute, which Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Florida) told a CNN anchor last week.

Now, Vox has attempted to explain the AR-15, still referring to it as an “assault” rifle.

There’s just one problem, Vox obtained the above graphic from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an anti-gun group, which identified a 37mm launcher as a “grenade launcher.”…

Sandford said he wanted to get an autograph from the police officer but instead went for the officer’s gun.

FOX News reported:

Authorities in Las Vegas arrested a 19-year-old man after he allegedly tried to disarm a police officer at the Donald Trump presidential rally.

Las Vegas Metro police said Michael Sanford approached a uniformed officer and started a conversation looking to get an autograph. Minutes into the conversation, Sanford attempted to disarm the officer, police said.

Authorities said officers assigned to the rally were able to take Sanford into custody with little disruption at the venue. No other incidents or injuries were reported.

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An abortionist in California, apparently upset by the presence of a pro-life activists standing outside his clinic, charged through the front doors of the facility while wielding a pair of scissors and proclaimed his “love” of tearing unborn babies apart in the womb.

The bizarre exchange with Dr. Robert Santella outside his Family Planning Associates abortion facility in San Diego was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube, reported LifeSite News.

“Stinky breath!” screamed Santella when the sidewalk counselor told him to repent.

A day after a melee erupted outside a Donald Trump rally, the San Jose police chief and mayor on Friday defended themselves from a national backlash over their handling of the dramatic and at times violent protest…

More than three years after it admitted to targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny, the IRS has finally released a near-complete list of the organizations it snagged in a political dragnet.

The tax agency filed the list last month as part of a court case after a series of federal judges, fed up with what they said was the agency’s stonewalling, ordered it to get a move on. The case is a class-action lawsuit, so the list of names is critical to knowing the scope of those who would have a claim against the IRS.

But even as it answers some questions, the list raises others, including exactly when the targeting stopped, and how broadly the tax agency drew its net when it went after nonprofits for unusual scrutiny.

The government released names of 426 organizations. Another 40 were not released as part of the list because they had already opted out of being part of the class-action suit.

That total is much higher than the 298 groups the IRS‘ inspector general identified back in May 2013, when investigators first revealed the agency had been subjecting applications to long – potentially illegal – delays, and forcing them to answer intrusive questions about their activities. Tea party and conservative groups said they was the target of unusually heavy investigations and longer delays,

Edward D. Greim, the lawyer who’s pursuing the case on behalf of NorCal Tea Party Patriots and other members of the class, said the list also could have ballooned toward the end of the targeting as the IRS, once it knew it was being investigated, snagged more liberal groups in its operations to try to soften perceptions of political bias…

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Hillary Clinton has a “Jekyll and Hyde” personality that left White House staffers scared stiff of her explosive – and even physical – outbursts, an ex-Secret Service officer claims in a scathing new tell-all.

Gary Byrne, who was posted outside the Oval Office when Bill Clinton was president, portrays Hillary as too “erratic, uncontrollable and occasionally violent” to become leader of the free world, according to advance promotional materials exclusively obtained by Page Six.

The allegations from Byrne, a 29-year veteran of the military and federal law enforcement, threaten to derail her campaign days before she is expected to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination.

He describes Hillary Clinton as acting friendly one moment, then raging the next…

Apologists for Hillary Clinton’s alleged criminal mishandling of classified documents say that it doesn’t matter, that she really did nothing wrong, or nothing significant. But the real question is not so much what she did as how she has responded to being found out.

Once during the mid-1960s when I was on active duty in the Marine Corps, I was the air liaison officer for a battalion of Marines aboard 11 ships in the Mediterranean. As the air officer and a senior captain, I had a rotating responsibility for the nuclear code book, kept in the safe in the operations room of the lead amphibious squadron command ship. I shared that duty with another captain, a squared away young man, liked by all he commanded and the son of a very high-ranking Marine.

On the day our ships were leaving the Mediterranean, we met the new amphibious squadron near Gibraltar and made preparations to transfer security codes and other sensitive material to the incoming Marine battalion. The young captain was on duty and went to the operations office to pick up the code book. He was alone in the office. He removed the code book and placed it on the desk while closing the safe. In a rushed moment, he stepped across the passageway to retrieve something he needed from his quarters. Seconds later, he stepped back into the operations office and found the operations sergeant having just entered, looking down at the code book.

Against all regulations, the code book had been out of the safe and unattended. It mattered not that it was unattended for only seconds, that the ship was 5 miles at sea, or that it was certain no one unauthorized had seen the code. The captain could have explained this to the operations sergeant. He could have told the sergeant that he “would take care of it.” He could have hinted that his high-ranking dad could smooth it over.

But the Marine Corps’ values are honor, courage and commitment. Honor is the bedrock of our character. The young captain could not ask the sergeant to betray his duty to report the infraction, no matter how small. Instead, the captain simply said, “Let’s go see the colonel.”…

Kristol ally, attorney and political opinion writer French announced in a National Review post Sunday night that he will not seek the highest office in the land:

Here is a sentence I never thought I’d type: After days of prayer, reflection, and serious study of the possibilities, I am not going to run as an independent candidate for president of the United States.

I gave it serious thought – as a pretty darn obscure lawyer, writer, and veteran – only because we live in historic times…

The Philippine president-elect has encouraged the public to help him in his war against crime, urging citizens with guns to shoot and kill drug dealers who resist arrest and fight back in their neighborhoods.

In a nationally televised speech late Saturday, Rodrigo Duterte told a huge crowd in the southern city of Davao that Filipinos who help him battle crime will be rewarded.

“Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun – you have my support,” Duterte said, warning of an extensive illegal drug trade that involves even the country’s police.

If a drug dealer resists arrest or refuses to be brought to a police station and threatens a citizen with a gun or a knife, “you can kill him,” Duterte said. “Shoot him and I’ll give you a medal.”

The 71-year-old Duterte won the May 9 presidential election on a bold promise to end crime and corruption within six months of the start of his presidency. That vow resonated among crime-weary Filipinos, though police officials considered it campaign rhetoric that was impossible to accomplish.

Human rights watchdogs have expressed alarm that his anti-crime drive may lead to widespread rights violations.

Duterte, a longtime Davao mayor, has been suspected of playing a role in many killings of suspected criminals in his city by motorcycle-riding assassins known as the “Davao death squads,” but human rights watchdogs say he has not been criminally charged because nobody has dared to testify against him in court…

A group of men in Bulgaria roam the countryside helping plant trees, participating in torch light parades on national holidays and tracking down illegal migrants to turn into the Bulgarian authorities. The group call themselves the “organization for the protection of Bulgarian citizens,” and were founded by Hristo Atanasov, a cook and self described patriot, Die Welt reports.

Atanasov leads the group who go out on weekends donning military fatigues to go on what they call “healthy walks” through the nearby beaches and mountains close to his home in the coastal town of Burgas. Atanasov claims that the group likes to go to the area because of the natural beauty but also because it is a major hotspot for migrants who have come across the border from neighbouring Turkey.

The self styled patriot describes the process saying that the group often spots the people smugglers first, “they run 200 to 300 metres ahead to see if the coast is clear,” he said. If the migrants see him and his men they often run away, “they think we are the police,” Atanasov remarked.

The patrol leader said that he is usually joined by around 30 more men at any given weekend. The group has so far managed to capture more than 50 migrants crossing the Bulgarian-Greek border and they bring them all directly to Bulgarian police.

The group believes they are the first line of defence from what they call the “migrant invasion,” and regard themselves as merely doing their duty to their country as self appointed border protectors. Their work is reminiscent of protests by the hipster-right Identitarians who built their own fences along the Austrian-Slovenian border when the government refused to control the migrant flow last year…

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U.S. officials appear poised to make history by approving the first private space mission to go beyond Earth’s orbit, according to people familiar with the details.

The government’s endorsement would eliminate the largest regulatory hurdle to plans by Moon Express, a relatively obscure space startup, to land a roughly 20-pound package of scientific hardware on the Moon sometime next year.

It also would provide the biggest federal boost yet for unmanned commercial space exploration and, potentially, the first in an array of for-profit ventures throughout the solar system…

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s attack on Donald Trump over Trump University could invite increased scrutiny of the Clintons’ involvement in a for-profit education scandal in which a company that runs shell colleges paid Bill Clinton $16.5 million to be its pitchman.

While the Clintons were collecting millions, Hillary Clinton’s State Department funneled at least $55 million to a group run by the college company, Laureate Education Inc., according to Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash” as Breitbart reported.

Clinton abruptly resigned from his post as “honorary chancellor” in April 2015 when the disclosure was publicized.

Documents uncovered by Washington-based watchdog Judicial Watch show Laureate Education paid the former president through a “shell corporation” pass-through account that evidently passed State Department scrutiny while Hillary was secretary of state.

Further, in a story showing how for-profit colleges encourage huge student debt, Forbes found the biggest borrower on the for-profit college list is Laureate Education’s Walden University, whose grad students borrowed $756 million in 2014.

Get a first-hand account of the Democratic presidential front-runner’s character in “Hillary The Other Woman.” Then take action with the Hillary Clinton Investigative Justice Project and let others know, with a bumper sticker calling for “Hillary for prosecution, not president.”…

Data from the Vermont Department of Health show that more than one-third of refugees resettled in Vermont test positive for tuberculosis.

Since 2013, about 900 refugees admitted to the Green Mountain State have been tested for tuberculosis, a potentially fatal infectious disease affecting the lungs. Of that number, 318 refugees, or 35.4 percent, tested positive.

Watchdog.org obtained the health data on Wednesday following reporting by Stateline that the disease may be making a comeback in the United States.

Refugees brought to the United States undergo TB tests as part of comprehensive health screenings. State health departments track the data to monitor cases and protect against public health crises.

According to IGRA (Interferon-Gamma Release Assays) blood test results from 2013 to the present, the highest percentage of incoming refugees to Vermont infected with TB occurred in 2013. That year, 108 refugees out of 248 tested, or 43.6 percent, showed positive for TB.

Test results showed slight improvement in subsequent years, with 34 percent of incoming refugees having TB in 2014 and 32 percent showing positive in 2015. Children under age 5 are excluded from the results, as they undergo tuberculin skin tests, or TSTs…

In February, The Lip TV interviewed the film’s director, Stephanie Soechtig, prior to the film’s release. During this interview, Ms. Soechtig openly discussed how she sent a producer of the film (most likely producer and LAWYER Joshua A. Kunau), who resides in Colorado, to Arizona to purchase firearms (including three pistols) privately. [original video marker 1.27]

According to Ms. Soechtig, the producer met a private seller in a parking lot of a local Wendy’s, and in less than four hours and without a background check, obtained a Bushmaster rifle and three handguns. ( AmmoLand News has highlighted the exact video portion in question below, see the entire video on The Lip TV link above. https:// youtu.be/DSHJSfHsvmw )

Ms. Soechtig incredulously states in her interview how such a private party transfer was legal, but, in fact, under existing federal law, it was illegal.

It is unknown what happened to these firearms and whether or not they returned with the producer to Colorado. Presumably, this crime was committed in order to highlight what the film’s proponents believe to be current inadequacies federal firearm laws, and to educate viewers on the process for obtaining a firearm. As Ms. Soechtig stated, all of the film’s content was “news to me.” Apparently, existing federal law prohibiting private interstate firearms transfers is also something that will also come as “news” to Ms. Soechtig and her staff.

Under current federal law it is a violation for any person to transfer, sell, trade, give, transport, or deliver any firearm to any person who the transferor knows or has reasonable cause to believe does not reside in the state in which the transferor resides. (18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(5).) Thus, by asking a private party in Arizona to sell the Colorado producer firearms, Ms. Soechtig and her staff induced an otherwise law abiding citizen to commit a federal crime. There was nothing legal about what Ms. Soechtig and her staff did, despite their slanted attempt to portray in their documentary the private sale of firearms as unregulated and legal.

It is also unlawful for any person other than a dealer to transport into or receive in the state where they reside any firearm purchased or otherwise obtained outside that State. (18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(3).) Violations of these laws can result in a hefty fine and a felony conviction of up to five years. (18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(1)(D).) Further, if two or more persons conspire to commit any offense, and at least one person commits an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, each party to the conspiracy can also face an additional fine and imprisonment for up to five years. (18 U.S.C. § 371.)

In other words, in nakedly advocating for more gun control laws in a one-sided and deceptive piece of propaganda, Ms. Soechtig and her staff likely violated existing federal laws by apparently conspiring to unlawfully import firearms from Arizona into Colorado, and by failing to properly conduct an interstate firearms transfer through a dealer.

It is clear from the fraudulent way in which gun rights supporters were portrayed in the documentary, and the unlawful way in which firearms were obtained to support the documentary’s gun control theme, that neither truth nor the law were concerns of Ms. Soechtig or her staff in creating the film.

Of course, I would be willing to wager that said transaction NEVER happened at all. I would surmise that this was simply a lie, manufactured to scare people, and support the Cult of Gun Control’s repeated lies about a “need for background checks”. This is what the left does after all, they lie, over and again. So, color me as skeptical that such a private sale ever went down. If the shows producer is a lawyer, he likely knows such a transaction would be a federal crime. It is doubtful he would risk so much to actually engage in this activity. He would rather produce a fakeumentary than risk prison time. It is most likely a lie that is crafted to fit the lunatic narrative of the Cult of Gun Control.

If I am wrong, and I am not ALWAYS right, then these FEDERAL CRIMES need to be prosecuted!